


this is no modern romance

by stitchingatthecircuitboard



Category: Batman (Comics), Batwoman (Comic), DCU (Comics)
Genre: F/F, Fix-It, references to events in the batwoman go arc so be advised
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 15:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2817971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchingatthecircuitboard/pseuds/stitchingatthecircuitboard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s breaking a promise to herself, running to Kate when Kate calls, after how many months of silence — she’d been right to stay away, of course she had, after that whole fucking scene, Kate shouting <i>queer</i> as the door slammed behind her, all because Kate had sacrificed her service for herself, and Renée wasn’t going to do the same. </p>
<p>It wasn’t her fault “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” existed, and maybe Kate was brave for coming out to the United States military, and maybe Renée was a coward for not doing the same, and maybe it was the other way around. </p>
<p>It didn’t matter. They weren’t right for each other anyways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is no modern romance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sinuous_curve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/gifts).



The call comes in the middle of the night. It always does. Renée wakes with a groan, fumbles out of the blankets, and picks it up.

“Montoya here,” she says.

Silence on the other end, which is how she knows it’s not Gordon or Bullock, not even Helena; GCPD would barely wait for her to answer the phone before filling her in, and Helena would tease a moment to make sure she was awake before launching into the latest case details. But now, there’s nothing, and that wakes Renée up more effectively than any murder ever could.

She waits, quiet, evens her breathing. Other times, other places she'd chalk it up to a misdial, a prank call, but this is Gotham City, and there's no such thing as coincidence. 

"Don't hang up," the caller says, and Renée nearly does on instinct because everything associated with that voice is marked a very firm _do not enter._

"Please," Kate Kane says; "please, Renée."

Renée closes her eyes. “What do you want, Kate?”

A pause.

“My sister,” Kate says at last. “Beth.” Something rustles on the other end, a soft burst of static. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

“Where are you?” Renée’s already pulling on her boots, her jacket, tucking her badge into her pocket. 

“The diner on 34th,” Kate says. “Renée—”

“I’m on my way,” Renée says. “Stay there.” 

 

 

She’s breaking a promise to herself, running to Kate when Kate calls, after how many months of silence — she’d been right to stay away, of course she had, after that whole fucking scene, Kate shouting _queer_ as the door slammed behind her, all because Kate had sacrificed her service for herself, and Renée wasn’t going to do the same. 

It wasn’t her fault “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” existed, and maybe Kate was brave for coming out to the United States military, and maybe Renée was a coward for not doing the same, and maybe it was the other way around. 

It didn’t matter. They weren’t right for each other anyways.

 

 

Kate Kane is not a small person. By this, Renée means that Kate Kane is model-tall, sure, strong and unafraid to show the muscle the military and her own drive had given her, but the real size is in herself. Kate Kane walks into a room and demands you notice her, with her blood-red hair, her precisely applied lipstick of the same hue, her charm and poise and confidence. Without saying a word, she dares you to challenge her, and smirks when you don’t. Since leaving West Point, Renée thinks Kate hasn’t lost a single one of these constructed confrontations.

She looks lost, now, not even looking up when Renée pushes into the diner, a tiny hole-in-the-wall barely bigger than her bedroom. She’s in civvies — _thank god_ — and swallowed whole in a ratty USMA sweatshirt, a giant pink infinity scarf. She’s staring into her coffee cup as though it holds the secrets to the universe. Maybe it does.

Renée orders her own cup and slides into the booth across from Kate. 

“Kate,” she says quietly. 

Kate glances up-and-back, a quicksilver flash of green gone almost before Renée can catch it. 

“I’m sorry,” she says to the coffee cup. The waitress slides over Renée’s own cup, and Kate quiets until she’s gone again. 

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, a little steadier this time. “I shouldn’t have called.”

“Well,” Renée says, irritated, “you did, and I’m here, so why don’t you just tell me what’s going on.”

“Beth,” Kate says. “She’s not dead. I found her.”

 

 

Kate’s told her enough of her past that she knows what Beth means to her, and GCPD records and an extant FBI contact had told her the rest: Gabrielle Kane and her twin daughters, kidnapped; Kate carried silent from the building where they’d been held prisoner; Gabi Kane dead, tortured, Beth Kane nowhere to be found, Beth Kane presumed dead. There had been a funeral and everything. 

These are the facts. The GCPD and Gordon — Bat-clan aside, they’re all trained to look at the evidence, to build a case, to make the connections without a costumed vigilante connecting the dots for them, never mind that she’s now one of those costumed vigilantes. 

If anyone else came to her, if someone walked off the street into the MCU bullpen and said, “Detective Montoya, my sibling/child/parent/distant relative twice removed, thought dead by literally everybody, is in Gotham and I’ve seen them,” she’d probably kick them over to Missing Persons, for one, make the delusional Gothamite someone else’s problem. She wouldn’t believe them, that’s for sure. 

But Kate — Kate’s not some delusional Gothamite, for all that she dresses herself in the iconography of its most delusional citizen and gets into scrapes with a cult calling itself the Religion of Crime (which, seriously? All the good cult names already taken?). Kate’s military, precise, driven; she’s not out for vengeance or redemption, but because she genuinely wants to help, and Batwoman is the best way she can do that. Renée gets it: it’s the same reason she wears the Question’s mask and hat and trench coat, looking for all the world like a noir detective from the Twilight Zone with her Dominican skin and faceless guise. 

And Kate has _evidence_. She lays it out, right there on the grimy chipped formica: pictures of Beth at eleven, pictures of Alice in the present day; the knife, the gauntlet, the blood: the match of monozygotic females, identical twin sisters. Kate and Beth, reading Carroll as kids, so often that they could both recite entire passages from memory, though Beth was always better at it.

“Kate,” Renée says, and Kate stops mid-sentence, sets her jaw like she’s expecting a fight. “No, look — I believe you. Beth is Alice.” In all honesty, she probably would’ve taken Kate’s word for it, and Kate knows that, she thinks, which means she’s got something else up her sleeve.

“What do you want, Kate?”

Kate sits straight like a rod, like the military must’ve taught her; she meets Renée’s gaze unwaveringly, but every ache and bruise and betrayal of the last week and change is worn into her, the lines in her face, the set of her mouth, the smudge of dark eyeliner at her temple. 

“I want to find my sister,” she says, “and I want to bring her home.”

Like there would ever be any other answer to that question.

She knows the answer already, but she asks anyways. “And where do I come in?”

Kate settles a bit, relaxing, like she knows she’s won. “Well,” she says, “I’ve heard you’re very good at answering questions.” 

“I’m a detective, Kate,” Renée says, long-suffering, “that is literally in the job description.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Renée says. “I do.” She downs her coffee, grimaces at the taste. “So when do we leave?”

Kate grins, alive and electrifying. 

 

 

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Kate tells her. They’re standing by their bikes, checking the saddlebags; Renée’s got her mask hidden in her jacket, and Kate’s going in civvies, black leather, red Under-Armor, black helmet. 

“I wasn’t going to leave a woman imprisoned by a cult of brainwashing criminals,” Renée says. “Give me some credit, Kate.”

Kate leans over, kisses her softly, a butterfly pressure, gone almost as quickly as it comes. “Thank you,” she says seriously. “And, Renée — I am sorry about what I said.”

“I know,” Renée says. “I know, Kate.” She catches Kate’s arm, pulls her back. “You’re still going to make it up to me later, though.” 

Kate grins, a razor-sharp slice of red. “Yes, ma’am,” she says, and kisses her again.


End file.
